The Faberge Egg Read Online Free PDF Page B

life. After she had decided to give up painting, they moved back to San Francisco, where Marilyn bounced between the arts like a falling pinball. One year she was a poet, the next a singer, but never without some minor successes. Between careers, Hillary was born and suddenly their marriage was good again. They would lie in bed for hours on Sunday morning playing with the baby and know that it was as much as life had to offer. Until Marilyn began to have her doubts. She went back to singing with a lousy rock group called Stump, then took up with cocaine and the lead singer, although McGuffin could never be sure of the order.
    He was uncertain about a lot of things during that time. He decided to beat up his wife’s lover, then decided that would be foolish, but at the last minute changed his mind again. He managed to avoid a criminal charge, thanks to a good albeit expensive lawyer, but was not so successful in the civil matter. It took most of what little cash McGuffin had left after the divorce to settle the matter out of court. She had shown him more misery and happiness than he had ever dreamed one woman capable, but she had also given him Hillary, and that made it all worthwhile.
    McGuffin reached into the glove compartment for his gun and placed it on the seat beside him. If anything happened to his daughter, he would surely kill somebody, he knew, but he didn’t know if it would be Kruger or himself.
    Just past the San Rafael exit, McGuffin pulled into a clean, well-lighted service station for directions to Marin Hill Drive. The attendant had never heard of it, but McGuffin found it on the map tacked to the wall, a twisting road on the ocean side of the San Rafael hills. He got back into the car and continued west, drove through the town and then slanted north in the direction of Marin Hill Drive. He found it exactly where the map indicated it would be, a thin strip of potted blacktop that snaked up the side of a steep hill beneath a column of large eucalyptus trees. McGuffin dropped the car into second gear and began the slow, winding ascent. There were small groups of mailboxes posted at intervals along the steep road, and driveways leading either up or down to faintly lighted houses deep in the trees. He was sure he had never been here, yet he experienced a quick déjà vu sensation of having driven this road once before. This was followed, without any apparent connection, by a sudden image of Miles Dwindling sitting with his black-leather doctor’s bag, the magical mystery bag, clutched tightly in his lap.
    McGuffin had been curious when he first saw the bag in the corner of the office, but Miles had been unwilling to satisfy his curiosity. “After you’ve been around awhile longer,” the old detective had promised. It was only after Miles’ death, when McGuffin, as the court-appointed executor of his estate, went through his things, that he was able to understand the old man’s unwillingness to share fully with him the sordid realities of the detection business. The black bag contained electronic listening devices, infrared lenses, falsified credentials, a disguise kit, a stethoscope, a glass cutter and other, cruder burglary tools. It was only then that McGuffin fully understood Miles’ frequent assertion that he was a “licensed pragmatist.” And it was only then that he realized why Miles had chosen a recent college graduate over several more experienced applicants for the job. Miles wasn’t looking for police experience; he was looking for a fellow pragmatist.
    After eighteen years in the business, McGuffin could understand this. He was often tempted to break the law in order to ensure justice for a client, and often did. But it was not a responsibility to be delegated to just anyone. Until now McGuffin, the intended lawyer, had assumed that his accidental profession was solely the result of Miles Dwindling’s untimely death. Faced with a file of open cases, he had consented to the probate